> It's easy to see how bad military interventions are... Yes, except replace the word "easy" with "can be measured." Once you get into the domain of things tha

> It's easy to see how bad military interventions are... Yes, except replace the word "easy" with "can be measured." Once you get into the domain of things that cannot be measured (or "not easy to see" as you say, presumingly requiring interpretation -- by whom?), you lose the empirical ground, and thus anything you say becomes close to worthless. I would rather stick to things that can be measured and not require speculation. An authentic non-Western civilization in Africa is a very beautiful dream, but there is one huge problem to it: guns are effective and can be smuggled, whether by white people or black people or whoever. Try looking at the spread of Christianity in Africa. Suppose there were no Western missionaries. Would we have had a "more authentic Africa" then? Probably not, we would have likely ended up with a "more Islamic Africa" instead. But don't dwell too much on this because it is just another of those "would" things that can't be measured.